Translator: Ilze Garda Reviewer: Denise RQ
For a very long time, we have believed
that the hand of an architect should look like this.
It is known that architects are smart and sophisticated.
They always wear black,
and they know better than anyone else how our cities should function.
They build models, and they look at them from above.
An architect's hand is like the hand of God.
This particular hand belongs to Le Corbusier,
and in this iconic photo, he is presenting a model of Plan Voisin,
a utopian modernist vision for Paris that luckily was never built,
but the impact of his ideas was enormous.
In fact, urban planners today
are trying to fix what this guy, with his hand from above, did to cities.
Modernist city planning produced spaces designed specifically for cars,
a city where different functions like shops, offices and housing,
are strictly separated;
a city where the traditional street, along with all street life,
is made obsolete.
Contrary to Le Corbusier, I deeply care about streets,
and I wish that the streets of our cities offered a more balanced space
for mobility and for social life.
I also believe that the hand of an architect can look like this,
and he, or she, can be working inside of the model,
directly on the street.
For the past five years,
I've had the opportunity to work in several urban design projects
in public spaces.
I've used my own hands to build these things.
I've spent many hours on the site,
and, while there, I've made some interesting observations.
It all started with a project in Bastejkalns Park in Riga,
that's when I spent a week crawling on the ground,
painting green circles,
and constantly explaining to curious passers-by why I am doing this.
I was actually setting up an outdoor exhibition
which was dedicated to a Latvian writer.
My experiments with color continued in Sarkandaugava neighbourhood in Riga,
and this time I painted everything red,
and, of course, I carried on explaining why.
It was to mark the first public square in Riga,
co-designed with a brave local community.
But today, I'd like to tell you more about the project in Miera Street.
The name of the street means 'peace' in Latvian,
and the name of the project "Mierīgi" translates as 'peacefully' or 'easily'.
At our studio, Fine Young Urbanists,
my colleague Toms Kokins and I started working with Miera Street three years ago.
Now, this was when I had just returned from Rotterdam, the Netherlands,
where I had spent several years studying and working.
When it comes to street design, the Netherlands is really a superpower.
There are so many different kinds of streets in the Dutch cities:
with beautiful big trees, with canals, with wide sidewalks
- and I know you're probably thinking this already -
with cycling lanes, of course.
Living in Rotterdam made me realize
that healthy lifestyles and vibrant street life
can be embedded in urban design.
Without even thinking of exercise,
I rode my bicycle for at least 20 minutes every day.
Without even looking for a park,
I had access to greenery right there on the street.
I saw people barbecuing, watching TV, or selling their furniture on the street,
and I gladly took part in that.
I felt that I had the freedom to move around the city whichever way I liked,
I was fit, and I was happy.
And then I returned to Riga.
I saw the streets here from a new perspective:
how sad they really are, how empty,
especially the ones that have been constructed recently.
Cycling felt uncomfortable,
and quite soon I switched to a car because it's so easy.
Riga today repeats the same mistakes
that American cities made back in the 1950s:
it builds highways to solve traffic problems,
it allows big shopping centers to pop up next to these highways,
and for suburban villages to grow just outside the borders of Riga.
At the same time, the historical center is rapidly loosing residents,
the air quality is the worst in the Baltic States
due to traffic congestion,
and there is an empty building on nearly every block.
Riga made me, an urban planner, feel restricted in my choices
and unconsciously switch to a lifestyle that makes me unfit and unhappy.
With all this in mind,
we decided we could do something about at least one street in Riga.
The reasons why we chose Miera Street
was that there was an active local community
which is quite exceptional for a street in the center of Riga,
there was a great spatial potential for a high-quality street life,
and there was a very obvious problem:
90% of the cars go on tram-rails leaving the lanes designed for them empty.
At the same time, pedestrians and the increasing number of cyclists
have to share a narrow sidewalk
and navigate between signposts, open doors, and parked cars.
We were sure
that the available street space can be used in a more balanced way.
By creating a shared car and tram lane in the middle,
space would free up for a cycling lane on each side of the street.
That would in turn allow us to vacate the side walks for walking,
for sitting, for bicycle parking, for outdoor cafes,
for plantings and for trees, for beautiful, green, leafy trees.
Did you know that in those almost 700 meters of Miera Street
that are considered to be a hip, creative quarter,
there are only 15 trees?
That is one tree for 45 meters, on just one side of the street.
That doesn't seem so hip, does it?
With a better designed street profile,
it would become easier and safer for pedestrians to cross the street,
small business would have better spatial conditions to develop,
and there would still be car parking available where needed,
the livability of Miera Street would improve,
and all this would in fact leave
the current traffic situation practically intact.
People will simply feel better, more at home
on a street that accommodates more choices.
What we also wanted to explore with this project
was the relationship between an architect and the local community.
The locals are surely experts of their street,
and we, urban planners, want to know what they know
because we want to create a design
that fits their needs and actually improves their street.
So at first we made these drawings and photo-montages
to have something to talk about.
Then we tried involving people on the street
by showing them our visions.
The response was mostly positive, but we still weren't really sure
if the proposed solution was the best fit or if we were even understood.
So eventually, we decided to test the idea spatially,
and we did what architects normally do:
we built a model.
But instead of building something small and looking at it from above,
we decided that we would become
those small plastic people inside of the model
and test the idea in real conditions on a scale one to one,
directly on the street.
The mock-up was built in three days,
and it remained in place for almost a week.
It changed the street instantly.
On one side, we added only 30 centimeters to the sidewalk,
and that was enough to create space for benches
and small café tables next to the wall;
which is very convenient if you want to sit down and wait for somebody,
have a meal, reorganize your bags after grocery shopping,
rest after a long walk,
or simply enjoy sitting down and looking at other people.
On the other side,
as soon as we put down tables and chairs,
people from a nearby café started serving coffee and cakes.
People instinctively know how to use a good street when they see it.
We at Fine Young Urbanists believe
this kind of urban prototyping with mock-ups
is the cheapest, fastest and most reliable way
for testing changes in the urban environment.
Urban prototyping is collective imagining, collective wishful thinking.
It allows you to feel the space with your body
to see if you can find a comfortable place for yourself,
if you want to stay there.
It is also a way to avoid costly design mistakes later.
We have learned
that these small actions in a public space
is a great way to involve the public in design process.
During construction time, we were constantly there:
building, painting and talking to people that were interested in this.
The most frequently asked question was, "Why is this thing blue?"
Well, the vivid color provoked people
to start a conversation with strangers about street design;
that is really the dream of an urban planner come true.
And this time we got all kinds of questions:
from highly positive, very supportive to rather critical, and even aggressive.
It is understandable
that not everybody supports the idea of more cyclists on the streets,
it is a nuisance.
Not everybody wants to give up their parking space
for an outdoor café or potted plants.
But here I would like to refer back to a smart advice
that my mother once shared with me:
"No one can resist good manners.
People are entitled to have an opinion that is different from yours,
but be polite, talk calmly, and listen to what others have to say.
Perhaps you'll learn something,
and perhaps they will start listening to you."
As urbanites, we must understand
that cycling lanes are not built only to please cyclists,
and street furniture is not installed for the profit of shopkeepers,
and streets in general do not exist only for the convenience of cars.
Thinking that would be
like still believing that phones are only made for calling.
Cities are not that simple.
Cities are very complex organisms where everything needs to be in balance
and where everyone
- young, healthy and financially secure,
as well as those whose income is modest and whose movements are limited -
can equally take part in mobility and in social life.
Why do I think that streets are so important?
The American urbanist and famous people watcher William H. Whyte
once beautifully said that streets are the rivers of life in the city.
Of course, streets help us effectively move around,
but streets are also a stage where public life can take place.
And public life really is the essence of cities.
People have not built urban settlements
to remain hidden from each other in their homes or in their cars.
They have come together
to exchange knowledge, to share resources, and to create something collectively,
and the good city has a capability
to embrace all the different choices of the people that live there
and to help balance them spatially.
After finishing the "Mierīgi" project, a video was made, and we posted it online.
The idea resonated with people worldwide.
Our little video has now been viewed, tweeted, shared, liked over 60 000 times.
That goes to show
that urban planners, activists, and community leaders all over the world
are looking for new ways to let their cities know
that people want to take street space back from cars and profit-hungry developers.
And we are definitely not alone:
there is a whole new breed of architects and urban planners
that are less concerned with designing iconic buildings
and more interested in humanizing the rigid, unbalanced city.
They are not afraid to take risks, to work with their own hands,
and they are masters in finding
loopholes in regulations and alternative ways of communication.
Forget about the arrogant modernist.
This new architect is more of a hacker.
Practices like Exist in France, or Raumlabor in Germany,
or Assemble in the UK,
are successfully transforming the role of architects
and changing the way we look at congested streets, empty buildings,
and undesired areas in our cities.
For example, Parkind Day started as a small initiative
of Rebar Art and Design Studio in San Francisco,
and in 10 years, it has grown into a global movement,
and several cities have even incorporated it into their urban policies.
Or the architectural firm ZUS in Rotterdam
managed to transform an undesired office block
that had stood empty for 15 years
into a creative hotspot and a testing site for new ideas.
That is a place now that many other cities are envious of.
How could we convince even more architects and urban planners
to become actively involved in city making?
I think one of the ways is through education.
Every year,
we organize a summer school for students and young professionals
of architecture, urban planning and design.
And in this summer school, they get a chance
to go through a full design cycle in just two weeks.
This is something rare in architectural education.
The participants do research, come up with a concept,
and test it immediately by building it in a public domain.
Through this, they learn how heavy real materials are
and how scary power tools can sometimes be.
And they don't just build for the sake of exercise;
they create something
that the local municipality - in our case, Cēsis -
or a local organization is genuinely interested in.
Finally, at the end of the summer school,
they see the finished construction being appropriated by the public.
They see whether it works as intended or it fails to live up to the concept.
This hand-on experience completely changes the way
these young architects view their profession.
In our summer school,
we teach that architecture reaches beyond buildings
and that urbanism is not just the space between them.
We believe that building is a social act,
but let's not forget
that prototypes are just a step towards creating real public spaces,
and a summer school will probably never replace a university.
I don't really think that Miera Street should be painted all blue,
and I know that professional builders
have much more skill operating a screw gun than architects ever will.
What I am suggesting
is that to keep a clear and critical mind we often need a change of perspective.
To build better cities, we need both:
a thorough understanding of street life and a view from above.
I believe that taking small steps can lead to major transformations in our cities.
And I really, really hope
that in the future there will be more architects and urban designers
that rely less on Mega Lo Mania visions and more on their humanity.
Thank you.
(Applause)